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I thought I was a fan of minimalism but it must be the skinny fonts or something because I have not enjoyed this latest trend. I see merit because it does make some of the old stuff look absurdly cluttered and busy, but this new stuff seems soulless in comparison.

I thought being a brand-whore was more along the lines of "soulless" but different stroke and all that. I don't think this is the new logo per se, but I personally don't have a problem with the more utilitarian/minimal approach. Have you tried integrating the previous identity into an app?

Sorry. That wasn't an attack directed at you. It's common to hear complaints about a shitty logo along the lines of "the old one is shitty, but the shitty character/charm has more equity than this new direction". My knee-jerk is typically along the lines of "****-off, charm-whore. I much prefer the mark that, you know, works."

Well, my intention was to talk about this new direction in design. The brand is irrelevant to the larger discussion at hand. I'm not finding the appeal of this new direction, and I usually like minimalism. But it feels like its crossed a line where everything looks indistinguishable. I blame the fonts.

Edit: I mean, I like OS X, but I think we'd all have a heart attack today if we were shown the Aqua interface.

I get you. The font is shit and has been criticized by type-geeks all over. It's part of their push to whatever the hell it's called Google-wide. That said, I myself prefer the new direction over the old simply because it feels more at home and less goofy in context (home screens, 3rd party sites, app launchers, etc). Also keep in mind that there are global sensibilities being taken into account more and more. Design is subjective (to a degree - aqua is universally viewed as crap). I mean, this aint got nothing on the icons in iOS7. That poop is weak-sauce.

It's gotten the point where logos are barely indistinguishable from each other. Everything uses the same few colors, the same design..it's kind of ridiculous.

I like the days of custom designed lettering for logos. I'd like to see someone come up with something like the Coca-Cola logo, which is timeless. Not even Pepsi could keep up...they switched to a Metro-style font awhile back.

It's gotten the point where logos are barely indistinguishable from each other. Everything uses the same few colors, the same design..it's kind of ridiculous.

I like the days of custom designed lettering for logos. I'd like to see someone come up with something like the Coca-Cola logo, which is timeless. Not even Pepsi could keep up...they switched to a Metro-style font awhile back.

Not a fan myself. I can see for the YouTube logo, sure fine, whatever. But using it in the interface (à la the Yahoo! weather app) only obscures the information. Typography is fun and all, but let's not put the cart (form) before the horse (function).

I used to work for a company that decided out of nowhere to spend tens of millions of dollars rebranding worldwide just to change the damn corporate color from blue to red. Red is apparently "more powerful".

It's also a really shitty color to work with when making internal websites. Blue has lots of options on the spectrum. With red you pretty much have red and dark red. Anything lighter is pink.

I love minimalism. I've watched every documentary and scoured the Internet looking for minimalist blogs to add my Feedly.

But I'm in near-complete agreement with Dakar, and I think shifuimam nailed my main concern:

Originally Posted by shifuimam

It's gotten the point where logos are barely indistinguishable from each other. Everything uses the same few colors, the same design..it's kind of ridiculous.

I like the days of custom designed lettering for logos. I'd like to see someone come up with something like the Coca-Cola logo, which is timeless. Not even Pepsi could keep up...they switched to a Metro-style font awhile back.

Minimalism is only effective if there is some sort of soul underneath the cleanliness. The new Bing logo is garbage. The typeface seems okay, but the "b" logo doesn't illicit any sort of a response similar to FedEx's famous arrow.

A side note: I'm actually really fond of Polygon's design, especially their logo: